Chronotopes of study abroad: the cultural Other,immersion, and compartmentalized space–time

Study abroad offers a specific configuration of encountering cultural Others: in a demarcated “abroad” space in a compartmentalized time period. Informed by Bakhtin's notion of chronotopes, this article investigates narratives of American college students who studied in Paris, France and Bilbao, Spain in June–July 2011 based on an ethnographic fieldwork of their stay. I identify two chronotopes held in tension in their narratives that reflect tenets of the discourse of immersion: of homogeneous space where every minute students spend in the host society is “local” time full of learning, which risks portraying the host society as frozen in the time of the students’ stay; and of heterogeneous space where local space–time and outsider (e.g. American students and tourists) space–time co-exist hierarchically, where students strive to show their engagement with the former. This article calls for encouraging students to examine the effects of these chronotopes on their experiences and for viewing study abroad not as an encounter of two cultures but as diverse students joining in the ongoing production of heterogeneous host society space with a compartmentalized yet expanding notion of time.     

Negotiating time and space on a study abroad program in South India

This paper investigates the context of student learning in study abroad programs, drawing on ethnographic research on a semester long study abroad program in South India. We show how students use multiple constructions of time and space as a framework for understanding cultural differences and for understanding what it means for them to “experience” India. We argue that students' conceptualization of space and time in the study abroad location also impacts what kinds of activities they consider to count as valuable forms of learning. Students' ideas about India shape their expectations of what the pace, workload, and activities of the study abroad program in India should entail. Their concepts of Indian time and space lead them to privilege “experience”-based learning over classroom-based or scholarship-based learning. In conclusion, we show how these insights have implications for study abroad pedagogy. Here, we suggest that student learning that is entirely based on “experience” outside the classroom is inherently limited and that students need to contextualize their field-based learning experiences with insights from critical, historical and social science research.     

Contemporary Irish theatre,the new Playboy controversy,and the economic crisis

Abstract

This article examines the impact of the economic crisis on contemporary Irish theatre. More specifically, I contend that the legal controversy surrounding Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle’s second production of Playboy of the Western World: A New Version in 2008 provides a case study of how professional theatre productions that dramatised stories of immigrant empowerment during the Irish economic boom were profoundly inhibited by the bust that followed. Their collaborative version of the new Playboy was widely regarded as Ireland’s most successful intercultural play and a commercial success when it was first staged at the Abbey Theatre in 2007. The subsequent breakdown in their relationship and ensuing legal dispute is more symptomatic of Celtic Tiger Ireland in economic collapse, I suggest, than the content of the play itself, or most other productions mounted in the period. I argue that this dispute did not simply reflect but also reinforced the social effects of the economic crisis, through its prolonged litigation, enormous expense, and especially the missed opportunity that it represented to position the multicultural and migrant themed Playboy within the Irish theatrical mainstream. More broadly, I suggest that the economic crisis has been marked by the disappearance of immigrants from the professional Irish stage, a void which was only partially filled by community theatre productions. A case in point is Adigun and Arambe’s most recent adaptation of Jimmy Murphy’s The Kings of the Kilburn High Road in The Paddies of Parnell Street (2013), a play which I positively appraise as an example of successful “intercultural re-appropriation”.     

Asylum seekers,Ireland, and the return of the repressed

Abstract

In 2014 residents in Direct Provision Centres for asylum seekers staged a series of protests. The protests, which coincided with the appointment of a new Minister for Justice who announced the Irish government’s plans to reform the asylum system, voiced three clear demands. Firstly, the protestors demanded that all asylum centres be closed; secondly, they demanded that all residents be given the right to remain and work in Ireland; and thirdly, they demanded an end to all deportations. The government’s response to these protests was to appoint a working group in October 2014, made up of representatives of migrant-support NGOs (but without any significant representation of asylum seekers themselves) while also announcing that it intends to reform rather than abolish the system.

Against this background, this paper makes three interlinked theoretical propositions. Firstly, I propose that just as the Irish state and society managed to ignore workhouses, mental health asylums, “mother and baby homes”, Magdalene laundries and industrial schools, they also “manage not to know” of the plight of asylum seekers, precisely because the Direct Provision system isolates asylum applicants, makes them dependent on bed and board and a small “residual income maintenance payment to cover personal requisites”, and makes it difficult for them to organise on a national level. “Managing not to know”, or disavowing, entails the erasure of the Direct Provision system from Ireland’s collective consciousness at a time when increasing emigration is returning to haunt Irish society after years of refusing to confront the pain of emigration. I argue that asylum seekers represent the return of Ireland’s repressed that confronts Irish people, themselves e/migrants par excellence. Secondly, I propose that by taking action and representing themselves, the residents of Direct Provision Centres can no longer be theorised as Agamben’s “bare life”, at the mercy of sovereign power, to whom everything is done and who are therefore not considered active agents in their own right. The third proposition responds to the theme of this special issue, that multiculturalism is “in crisis”, arguing in the conclusion that this “crisis” hardly applies to Ireland, where the brief flirtations with “interculturalism” by state, society but also Irish studies disavow race and racism in favour of a returning obsession with emigration, which enables the continued disavowal of the experiences of asylum seekers in Direct Provision.     

维新之艰难兮，公缔其始--纪念李端棻上《请推广学校折》一百二十周年

1896年,李端棻上《推广学校折》,面对当时我国“时事多艰,需才孔亟”的现状,通观全局,统筹兼顾,进行了切中时弊的分析,主张“自京师以及各省府州县皆设学堂”;提出了一整套富有革新意义而又切实可行的发展新教育的方案,而且为光绪帝采纳,成为戊戌维新的主要内容之一,并较快地付诸实行,推动了我国教育走向近代化。     

魏晋南北朝经学的演变与更新

皮锡瑞在《经学历史》中认为：魏晋为经学中衰时代,南北朝是经学分立时代,并不能代表这个时期经学的全貌。东汉末年郑学的出现,标志着经学兼容古今而演变的方向。三国时期经学在南方传播,出现了南北互动的新气象。魏晋经学在北方继续传承,并在演变中得到发展。十六国北朝各少数民族统治者“变夷从夏”,缩小了胡汉民族文化的差异,中原儒学虽历经丧乱而得以存续,更值得注意的是妇女也参加了经学教学与学术传承。北朝经学继承两汉以来的传统,比较重视考证,而不善于创新。东晋南朝儒学受玄学的影响,清谈之风推动了儒释道的交流,教育格局多样化促进了儒学的玄化。所谓“南人约简,得其英华;北学深芜,穷其枝叶”,出现了南北学风的不同趋势。陆德明撰《经典释文》,由陈入隋入唐,将南学传入北方。颜师古、孔颖达定《五经正义》,亦多从南学。南学终于成为唐朝经学的主流,并成为中国传统文化的主流。     

民国《贵州通志·艺文志》“《尔雅集韵》”条辩证

民国《贵州通志·艺文志》著录黄彭年撰《尔雅集韵》一书。而追索《艺文志》著录的史源,并取其他史料相印证,推寻其致误的原因,证明黄彭年曾批校《尔雅》《集韵》二书,但并未撰《尔雅集韵》一书。此外,又据各家书目题跋,梳理了黄彭年批校《集韵》的经过及其批校本流传情况。     

浙江临安余村五代墓发掘报告

2001年9月浙江省临安市文物馆组织清理了一座唐五代时期墓葬。墓葬平面略呈船形,为多耳室、多壁龛的券顶砖室石门单室墓。随葬器物以越窑青瓷器为主,有少量的银器和铜钱。墓葬年代早于临安青柯五代墓、晚于临安晚唐钱宽水丘氏夫妇墓。墓主人应为五代钱氏王室成员或功臣,很有可能为钱镠第二子钱元玑墓。该墓的发现为研究五代十国时期墓葬形制、越窑瓷等提供了珍贵的实物资料。     

国内城体育场地点高句丽遗址研究

国内城体育场地点遗址是吉林省集安地区一处重要的高句丽建筑遗迹,通过对出土遗物和相关文献等的分析可以发现,体育场地点遗址可能是高句丽时期一处与"御膳房"相关的仓储遗迹,它为寻找国内城时期高句丽的王宫遗址提供了重要线索。体育场地点遗址的年代上限应不早于371年,在高句丽迁都平壤(427年)以后逐渐废弃。     

智慧博物馆的发展路径探析

智慧博物馆是传统实体博物馆发展到一定阶段所产生的一种新的博物馆高级形态,具有主体的人本性、资源的整合性和数据的再生产性等基本特征。与数字博物馆相比,智慧博物馆的"智慧化"主要体现在数据来源的多样性、数据传输的多向性和数据交换的普遍性上。建设智慧博物馆需要警惕走入载体离心化、技术泛滥化、内容娱乐化、数据固态化和建设盲目化的误区,抓住"数据"这一核心要素,围绕数据生成、数据加工、数据运用和数据共享诸环节,科学系统地推进展开。